Phase two of the coronavirus
emergency will last from six to eight months, experts said
Wednesday.
Phase two is what has been called the intermediate period the
country will go through when the current stringent lockdown
measures are eased but some restrictions will stay in place,
meaning normal life has not yet resumed.
"There will be other battles to fight", said physicist
Alessandro Vespignani, while infectivologist Massimo Galli said
that testing will be needed first to avoid spreading the
recovery over an "infinite" time or, on the other hand, bringing
it forward with the risk of creating new hotspots.
Vespignani also said it would be a summer "without travel".
The experts spoke after the coronavirus infection and deaths
curves started falling on Tuesday.
The government has said repeatedly that phase two would
involve "living with the virus".
Government sources said Wednesday phase two, which would be
long, was "possible" after May 1, and they were "studying"
procedures and categories less at risk to be brought out of
lockdown first, and gradually for the moment.
But the coronavirus infection curve is not falling in some
regions, Rome university physicist Federico Ricci Tersenghi said
Wednesday.
He said it was "too soon" to ease the lockdown because it has
not been possible to draft nationwide estimates and there was a
"patchwork" of regional data.
Tersenghi said it would be several weeks be fore containment
measures could start being eased.
Schools, meanwhile, are expected to reopen in September , but
only for "online revision", sources said Wednesday.
The head of the small business group in industrial employers
group Confindustria, Carlo Robiglio, told ANSA Wednesday that
small and medium businesses in Italy would risk going under
unless they resume production in May.
Robiglio, whose group Piccola Industria represents 98% of
Confindustria's firms, said "this situation must find a solution
in May, because if we go past the summer with a block of this
type, the risks become extremely heavy.
"Phase two must start for a series of activities by the end
of April, the start of May".
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